The Art of Baking
by Lady Addiction
Summary: Hikaru sets up a friendly tournament game with a twist. (one-shot, complete)


_** THE ART OF BAKING**_

_**By Lady Addiction**_

_**DISCLAIMER: HnG, etc., is not mine. This fic, etc., is.**_

_**PAIRING: Slight AkiHika**_

_**RATING: Gen**_

_**SUMMARY: Hikaru sets up a friendly tournament game with a twist.**_

_**WARNINGS: Ehh, fluff?**_

_**Ooh more Hng fics! There's a bit of a bloom in HnG in LJ now and have been duly inspired. Fear not, I will try to write more on my other fandoms, though am wrestling with a Sasunaru temptation. **_

_**Anyway, please let me know what you think! I do adore reviews! **_

_**Enjoy! **_

WWWW

"Hikaru! Hikaru!"

"Huh? What, Akari?" Shindou Hikaru, 18-year-old professional Go player, was staring outside the window of Haze High School, idly watching the soccer team practice.

"What are you doing? We're already 15 minutes late!"

Hikaru looked at his oldest friend with a skeptical expression. "Late for what?" he was blankly. Akari scowled, stamping her feet. "Mou! I can't believe you forgot you promised to help the Go Club prepare for the festival tomorrow!"

"Festival?" The light was slow to dawn.

Akari rolled her eyes. She told herself it was probably because Hikaru had just lost the game to enter the third preliminary rounds to the Jyuudan title yesterday. Still, her friend's airheadedness was exasperating.

"Remember! The school is having a club cooking festival tomorrow! All of the clubs have to compete for awards, like the Best Food Served and the Most Creative and the Most Ingredients Used! I kow you're not part of the Go Club, but you already agreed when I asked you last week, remember!"

Hikaru did faintly remember receiving a phone call at some ungodly hour on a Saturday morning and Akari chattering on and him agreeing to something. He was a bit too distracted by the sight of his bed partner to truly pay attention and now he was paying for it.

"Alright, already, geez! Well, where are we going?"

"We're going to Naoko-chan's house! She says her kitchen's really big and has lots of space since both of her parents love cooking." Akari was already aglow as Hikaru began to speedily pack up his stuff. They were out the door in a matter of minutes.

"So what are we making?"

Akari grinned.

WWWW

"Oi, Shindou!"

Hikaru was grinning wickedly as he stood up, brushing off his shirt and pants. Though he still attended highschool, he had convinced his parents to let him stay in a cheap but comfortable apartment close to the Japanese Go Association building.

It was a one-bedroom apartment with a tiny balcony, and a Western-style bathroom, with a combined shower-bathtub and an attached toilet and sink. The kitchen was right by the door, separated from the rest of the room by a wall.

Hikaru had kept it simple. With the help of his thrifty and surprisingly clever mother, he had managed to get good deals on a low Japanese table, several cabinets for miscellaneous items, and two sets of bookshelves, all arrayed along right and the kitchen wall. A standing halogen lamp stood at a corner, easily able to illuminate the entire room. The floor was covered in tatami mats, gifts from his father, while his mother provided the calligraphy scrolls, decorative fans, and two vibrantly-colored prints that decorated the left wall. His grandparents had surprised Hikaru with a brand new kotatsu table, two sets of beautiful quilts, and several pillows to sit or kneel on while he played Go. Hikaru's goban and go-ke, as well as a small pile of three portable ones, were set by the balcony doors, kept in pristine condition.

In contrast to the immaculate living room was Hikaru's bedroom, consisting of a laptop (birthday gift from his friends) and basically his old bedroom furniture, including his TV and entertainment sets. The walls were plastered with enormous calendars filled with untidy scribbling and pictures of his friends and family. Clothes, books, and papers were strewn haphazardly over the surface.

Reason for the difference? His mother insisted on coming over to clean up after him, since Hikaru adamantly refused to return home on a regular basis just to have good food. Instead he cooked his own meals, usually ramen loaded with meat and a few token vegetables, oden, or the occasional stirfry.

His surprising skill in the kitchen was probably the reason why his apartment suddenly became the site of many a study session with his friends. That and probably because of the kotatsu.

"Minna! Come in! Everything's ready." He threw open the door and the group trooped in. There were usually five to ten of them in the study group, cramming around the kotatsu or the other table to have dinner and chat, before they congregate in small groups to study Go. There was Waya, Isumi, Nase, Honda, Fuku from his Insei days, three Insei students who Hikaru tutored regularly, and lastly, Touya Akira.

Today everyone was there. Hikaru shared a private look with Touya as the other brushed past him to settle at the head of the kotatsu table.

They were all seated, curiously eyeing a large cardboard box set at the top of the kotatsu table. On the other table, set beside the kotatsu, were a rice cooker, and a set of bowls, chopsticks, and glasses.

Hikaru happily sat cross-legged beside Touya and looked expectantly at the crew before him. Since they had the study sessions twice a week and Hikaru had balked at always cooking for a group, they had negotiated a potluck-draw system. After every meeting, Hikaru would bring out a covered box with four ping-pong balls marked with "soup", "meat", "vegetable", "dessert". Then three of them would draw a ball and be responsible for bringing it to the next meeting, while a fourth would be responsible for the drinks. This time, Waya had brought the drinks, Honda had brought assorted mochi cakes for desert, Umezaka Reiko (a pretty sixteen-year-old who was Hikaru's newest student) beef ramen for a meat entrée, and Fuku vegetable chowmein for a vegetable entrée. The covered dishes were all arranged beside the pot of ramen.

"Oi, Shindou, what's this?" Waya asked, poking at the box. He leaned closer and sniffed. It smelled warm and spicy.

"Well, I got tired of just having a regular old kenkyuukai," the other boy annouced. Everyone stared at him with wary expressions. "So I decided that after we eat, we're going to do 30-minute tournament games on 13x13 boards."

"13x13!" Tsuchirou Yuki, a thirteen-year-old Insei grimaced. "Isn't that for beginners? Why can't we use regular 19x19?"

"Because the go sets were going to be using are special!" He reached over, grabbed the box, and gently lowered it to the floor and pushed it behind him. "Okay, let's eat!"

The sounds of squishing plastic, cutlery banging onto porcelain or metal, and loud voices began to cover the air.

"So, Shindou, what is it?"

Hikaru looked at Touya, who had leaned over slightly to whisper the question. Touya's brilliant green eyes were sharp. Hikaru winked at him. "It's going to be fun, Touya. Promise."

Suddenly, those green eyes darkened and Hikaru flushed as he remembered the last time he said those words. A large, warm hand came to rest on his knee and squeeze.

"Aa," Touya breathed, cheeks pinkening as well.

"Ne, Shindou, have you ever played…"

"Touya, congratulations…"

They rejoined the conversation, but the warmth of their exchange remained.

WWWW

Finally, everyone was replete and all the dishes were washed. To the group's surprise, the two tables remained in the living room. Usually, they had to drag them inside the bedroom to make room for the gobans.

With great ceremony, Hikaru opened the cardboard box and began hauling out several large tins. Then he began pulling out slender squares covered in wax paper and laid out four of them on the tables. Two tins were set at each goban station.

"Hehehehe, okay, this whole idea was from Akari," Hikaru began to explain as he unwrapped the squares. His audience gasped as they realized that they were looking at a normal-sized 13x13 goban made of dark-brown cookie dough with a smooth glossy surface. "We had a school club cooking festival at Haze two days ago and she decided to have the club make gobans and stones out of bread and cookie dough and use them to teach people how to play Go. Basically, she would set out a tsumego problem and the person who can kill it or capture stones gets to eat the cookies. We won the Best Food Served, actually."

"Hah! So that's why you said 13x13!" Waya said, looking amazed. "Wow, Shindou! I knew you could cook but I didn't know you could bake as well!"

"Hehehe…" Hikaru rubbed the back of his head, deciding not to tell them that it had taken him twenty burnt cookie-gobans and several sheets of cookie-stones before he could make good ones. And he had started as soon as the festival finished. "The go club used 9x9 but that's way too small for a good tournament game. 19x19 would take a long time plus it would need too much stuff to be able to make several hundred stones out of cookie dough!"

"Oh! What is this made of?" Nase asked, gently touching a goban. Everyone else were also leaning over and sniffing appreciatively.

"Well, we found out gingerbread is best and Ikou-san, who was teaching us how to make them, told us to put raisins and bits of dried apples in them as well. She also taught us to make the caramel glaze," Hikaru explained. He beamed as everyone 'oohed' and 'aahed'. Matsumura Vincent, the last of Shindou's students, a fourteen-year-old, was already drooling at the idea of tasting the treat. "We'll break it up to eat once we finished the game. Sorry about that, Honda-san." He looked apologetically at the taller, older man. Hikaru had put away the mochi cakes in the refrigerator to be given away later. Honda smiled and shrugged. "It's no problem, Shindou."

"And the stones are in the tins. They are all made of cookie dough, but the white ones have bits of nuts and tastes like vanilla. The black ones have bits of chocolate and tastes like chocolate.

"Okay, tournament rules. We'll have only a 2.5 komi, since the boards are so small and it's only to prevent ties. No eating the stones, Waya, Vincent! We decide turns based on janken. Yes, Yuki, janken! And after the game, both opponents get to keep all of the stones they put on the board but they have to switch tins with their opponent. Is that understood?"

"Why do we have to switch, Shindou-kun?" Fuku asked, frowning.

"Well, you all want to have both black and white stones to eat, right? But since we wouldn't really want to eat something that's been touched lots by another person, I decided it would only be fair that each person gets to keep the stones they used, and get the ones the other hasn't used. Also, the winners of the games get to use their new tins for the next game." Hikaru took a deep breath as he looked around, finished with the explanations. "Well, what do you think?"

Everyone stared at the table, to him, then to each other. "Never thought you'd think of something this clever, Shindou," Isumi commented with a grin.

"Ah, but baka-Shindou didn't, Isumi-san!" Waya corrected with a smirk. "Fujisaki-chan did!"

"Biiida!" Shindou stuck his tongue out at Waya.

"Boys," Nase sighed.

"Shindou." The room quieted as they usually did when Touya spoke during their Go studies. "How do we decide on partnerships."

"Ah!" The boy ran to the bedroom. He returned with another, open tin. There were folded strips of paper inside it. "By draw!"

Soon, they were all appropriately settled in front of the gobans, unopened tins at their sides. The pairings went as follows:

Honda 2-dan :Nase 1-dan

Waya 4-dan:Yuki 12th, 1st class

Touya 6-dan, Jyuudan:Fuku 2nd, 1st class

Shindou 3-dan:Isumi 3-dan

"Ah, gomen, I didn't know everyone would come today," he apologized to Vincent and Reiko, who looked disappointed at having drawn blank pieces. "Don't worry. You can both play whoever loses."

"Which would be you, Shindou," Isumi-san challenged quietly. Hikaru glowered back. "I don't think so, Isumi-san."

"Anyway," he turned back at the two of them. "Do you mind keeping time? After a playing time of 30 minutes, each player only gets another 10 minutes for byo-yomi."

"Sure," Reiko said with a smile. Vincent nodded beside her. "But I don't have a watch," she continued.

"Oi, you can have mine," Waya offered, taking off a bulky sportswatch and fiddling with it. "There, I have it set for forty minutes. Just press this to start and this other to stop. Do you need one, too, Matsumura?"

"Nah. I have mine."

"Let's start then."

"What the hell!" Everyone turned to stare at Waya, who was gawking down at the inside of his tin. Hikaru bit his inside cheek to keep from grinning.

Soon they were all taking the tops off their respective tins.

"Masaka!" Touya breathed, reverently drawing one white stone out. They were much wider and flatter than true go stones, but were definitely easy enough to handle. On the uneven cookie surface was a caricature of Kuwabara-sensei sticking out his tongue in black icing. He put it on the board and drew out another one. This time it was of Yashirou, the boy from the Kansai Go Institute who attended the Hokutohai Tournament with Hikaru and Touya three and a half years before, with a big bump on his head.

Everyone else were staring bemusedly at the faces on the Go stones, and most were snickering or giggling. Hikaru was sniggering as he took one out of Ogata-Ouza cross-eyed.

"Shindou!" Touya remonstrated the laughing boy. "You have absolutely no respect!"

"Don't listen to him, Shindou! This is brilliant! Man, I'm not eating any of mine if they're this good! I never thought to see Morishita-sensei like this!" Waya held up a black stone with Morishita-sensei's face with ludicrously long lashes and pouty lips. Both of Hikaru's male students echoed his sentiments. Fuku, Nase, and Reiko were just giggling endlessly as they pulled out stones to stare at, while Isumi was looking bemusedly between one white stone with a bucktoothed Waya and another white one of Shinoda-sensei, their teacher from their Insei days, with whisker marks on his cheeks and a fanged grin.

"That's so clever!" Reiko praised, cheeks flushed, eyes dancing. "It must have taken you forever, Shindou-sensei!"

"Well, I didn't do everybody in the Go Association, only the ones I knew and friends. And doing that was what made the entire thing the best experience ever," Hikaru replied, still snickering.

"Okay, enough fun!" Nase said loudly. She looked excited and ready. "It's time to play!"

They all grinned at the one across from them and bowed simultaneously over the gobans. "Onegai shimasu!"

-FIN-


End file.
